FIDO via Internet. FAQ (lang:english)

This FAQ started in SU.IP.SYSOP echo as an first attempt to summarize experience of Fidonet sysops from Regions 45, 46, 47, 49, 50 and 51, Zone 2. This part of cyberspace is also known as fido7, as these countries used to share country code 7 some time ago. Originally this FAQ was maintained by Alex Konshin, 2:5030/217 in Russian only. Sometimes early in 1997 I decided to translate it into English and since then I've been updating it on a more or less regular basis. Please, send me your opinions and any information that you think might be relevant to the Fido-over-IP topic. Warning: some links from this page are pointing overseas and may be really slow.

Contents:

1. BinkD
   • General info
   • Binkd-related WWW links
2. Miscellaneous software for your operating system:
   • OS/2
   • *NIX
   • DOS
   • Windows 3.x
   • Windows'95
   • Windows NT
3. Vmodem under OS/2 troubleshooting
4. Space delimiter in nodelist number field
5. Where can I get nodelist containing ip addresses of Fidonet nodes?
6. IP-list flags used in Region 50
7. fidonet.net domain
8. Credits, etc...

BinkD (OS2/Win32/*NIX/Amiga):

General info

Binkd 0.9.2 was released Nov 7. What's new?

• What is binkd?

  BinkD is a new BSO (Binkley Style Outbound) mailer that works with TCP/IP only. It's protocol (called BINKP) is already supported by Argus. BinkD is available with sources and is designed keeping in mind portability between Windows'95/WinNT/OS2/Unix platforms. It is very simple in setup, extremely small in size and provides probably the best throughput over TCP/IP links.

• Ok, sounds good! Where can I get it?

  Try this: ftp.prospect.com.ru, login:binkd, ftp.falcon.spb.su. These two sites will probably contain the latest versions. You can also try my mirror site in Canada , but it might be not up to date.

Other binkd-related sites:

• Binkd home page by Dima Maloff: http://www.corbina.net/~maloff/binkd/
• Binkd User Reference: http://www.doe.carleton.ca/~nsoveiko/fido/binkd/man/
• Alex Konshin's binkd page: http://www.falcon.spb.su/fido.BinkD.html
• List of binkp-capable nodes by Ruslan Hakurate (obsolete, see fidonet.net domain): http://www.aha.ru/~hadja/binkd.txt
• Argus home page (binkp-compatible mailer for Win95/WinNT): http://www.ritlabs.com/argus/

Miscellaneous software for your operating system:

• OS/2 :
  Basically, you have two options: Vmodem and BinkD.
  • Vmodem.exe is a part of the SIO communication drivers distribution. Read vmodem.txt carefully, it is a comprehensive manual.
  • Brief outline:
    put something like this to your config.sys:

    
    DEVICE=C:\OS2\SIO16\SIO.SYS (COM2) (COM3,INTERNET,NONE) (COM4,INTERNET,NONE)
    

    it tells SIO to create 2 virtual COM ports that will be available via vmodem.

    Run vmodem.exe. Now you can access these ports from any of your communication software. See Vmodem troubleshooting section for further problems.

• *NIX :
  You can install ifmail together with the patch ftp://ftp.card.ru/pub/sts/iftel3.tgz that allows it's interoperability with Vmodem. This patch is for ifmail v.2.8 and is said to cause problems when applied to other versions.

  Alternatively, you can install BinkD which is available with more or less portable sources and binaries exist for many popular platforms. Both ifcico (ifmail's mailer part) and binkd can share the same Binkley style outbound and run concurrently on the same machine/node.

• DOS :
  There's rlfossil - a quick'n'dirty utility that emulates FOSSIL interface for telnet/rlogin connections.

• Windows 3.x :
  comt.zip - I haven't tried this myself, but for sure it's for native Win applications only. In other words, it's useless for DOS mailers running in a DOS box.

• Windows 95 :
  • Your first option is to install BinkD.
  • Second option (DOS boxes only): you can run rlfossil using a second network card and packet driver or ndis3pkt.zip. If you're running ndis3pkt, make sure that you assign a unique ip address for every DOS session using it's interface.
  • [from Sergey Astashonok, 2:450/58]: Combination of COM/IP v1.03b with T-Mail/NT seems to be working. Use

    AT &D2 S1009=3142 s1008=3142 s1001=1 s1002=1 s1004=0 s1005=0|

    init string to connect to Vmodem. DTR drop can't force it to hangup, so use

    ~~~+++~~~ATH0|

    instead of DTR drop.
  • There's Argus - a native Windows'95/NT mailer with GUI, that also supports TCP/IP transport.

• Windows NT :
  • Your first choice seems to be BinkD.
  • There's wntfossil 1.0 beta3. (the latest version should be available at http://www.woodruff-software.com), that is said to allow using telnet connections, but so far they succeeded only in running a BBS through it. This thing runs on NT 4.0 Server only.
    How to make it work with T-Mail (Nikolay Buhalov, 2:50/352.5, coadmin@finet.rosmail.com):
    
    • Install Woodruff fossil for NT v1.0 for the same port as your IP connection.
    • Configure it for TELNET (go Control Panel -> WinFossil -> change COMx to TELNET)
    • Configure your T-Mail to use TELNET instead of port number x
  • There's Argus - a native Windows'95/NT mailer with GUI, that also supports TCP/IP transport.

Vmodem troubleshooting:

• regular SIO supports up to 4 ports only, but there's a 16-port (commercial?) version also available;

• vmodem is not capable of storing it's configuration (i.e. no ATZ command);

• mailer says that it can't initialise vmodem. Run
  mode com3,dtr=off,idsr=off,odsr=off
  before starting your mailer.

• refuses to work without any visible reasons. That happens fairly often - up to several times a day. The reasons for such behaviour are unknown, but a suspicious number of dead sockets (netstat -s) accumulates. Only one workaround is known so far: correctly close all the running instances of your mailer, issue the aforementioned mode command (just in case...), close vmodem.exe by pressing Ctrl-C ... and pray for the following not to happen:

• vmodem doesn't start saying that the port is busy. That usually happens while trying to restart vmodem. Looks like the port keeps some remains of the previous ip connect (netstat doesn't show any open sockets, though). No workaround is known. Try this:

  
  do
     wait for a few minutes;
     try to start vmodem;
  while vmodem not running.
  

• vmodem supports two protocols: telnet and proprietary VMP. Configure vmodem to use another port for inbound connections in order to be able to run standard telnetd (\TCPIP\ETC\SERVICES for IBM TCP/IP or \MPTN\ETC\SERVICES for IBM MPTN):

  VMOTelnet 60177
  

Space delimiter in nodelist number field

• You'll need to specify port number after ip address (separated by space) in order to connect to nonstandard ports. That can be a problem, because the ways to include a space in the nodelist phone number field are not trivial.

• T-Mail has an undocumented feature that substitutes underbars in phone number for spaces. The following is from a sample subst.lst file:

  2:5020/400 Phone 194*87*1*79_60177

• for BinkleyTerm and Xenia you should escape space with a backslash to get the same result:

  ,118,Comp,Moscow_Russia,Alexey_Kshnyakin,158*250*32*40\ 60177,38400,XA,MO,CM,TCPIP,IFC
  

Where can I get nodelist with IP addresses of nodes?

• (obsolete) There's ip-list for Region 50 of Zone 2, maintained by Basil Dolmatov (2:5020/140). It is distributed via r50-list fileecho and is available from many nodes with ip connectivity, e.g.: http://www.falcon.spb.su/fido.vmodem.html

• (obsolete) Ruslan Hakurate, 2:5020/1001, maintains a list of BinkP compatible nodes which can be conveniently included into BinkD config.

• Alex Konshin, 2:5030/217, the original author of this FAQ, maintains am online FIDO-via-IP query/registration form.

• see also section on fidonet.net domain

ip-list flags:

• VMP - proprietary vmodem protocol, supported by vmodem only ('coz the author didn't provide any protocol description for porting to another platforms and implementing in compatible software). By default it answers at port 3141. If you type atdt#194*58*242*1 to vmodem, it'll connect to my system using VMP (# means connect to port 3141 using VMP). Note, that dots in IP address are substituted for asterisks.

• TEL - telnet protocol. It's supported by almost all of the software, but ifmail requires patches to do it correctly. Vmodem uses it if no # prefix is specified and by default tries to establish connection with port 23. You'll need to specify port number after ip address (separated by space, e.g. atdt#194*87*1*79 60177) in order to connect to nonstandard ports. That can be a problem, because the ways to include a space in the nodelist phone number field are not trivial (see above). This example shows a default vmodem-compatible telnet port for ifmail, i.e. if a node has IFC flag, it typically accepts compatible telnet connections to port 60177.

• IFC - for ifmail nodes. Proprietary telnet daemon answers connections to port 60179 (by default), and vmodem-compatible takes care of port 60177.

• BND - for BinkP compatible nodes. Deafult port is 24554. So far is supported by BinkD only.

• TCP or TCPIP - for any of the above. Indicates general TCP/IP capability.

Flags described above are not really suitable for untroduction into the master Fidonet nodelist. The reason is that Z2 nodelist allows user flags Txy that indicate system's worktime. This flag interferes with TEL and TCP. A discussion on the nodelist flags indicating IP-capability is currently underway in IP_CONNECT echoconference.

fidonet.net domain

• What is fidonet.net?

  fidonet.net is an Internet domain registered to facilitate development and deployment of fido-over-internet technology of all kinds and flavours.

  Here is a recent (as of 22/09/97) whois info on it:

     Domain Name: FIDONET.NET
  
     Administrative Contact:
        Ustinov Fyodor  (UF7-ORG)  ufm@PROSPECT.COM.RU
        7 095 564 8272
        Fax- 7 095 564 8945
     Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
        Valdov, Dmitry  (DV15-RIPE)  dv@KIS.RU
        +7 831 2342022 +7 831 2343420
     Billing Contact:
        Ustinov Fyodor  (UF7-ORG)  ufm@PROSPECT.COM.RU
        7 095 564 8272
        Fax- 7 095 564 8945
  
     Domain servers in listed order:
  
     NS.FIDONET.NET      195.98.32.193
     NS1.FIDONET.NET      194.85.143.33
  

• How fidonet.net subdomain and host names are assigned?

  Subdomain and host names are formed in the same way as for the fidonet.org domain. For example, if your 4D Fidonet address is A:BBB/CCC[.DDD], then your domain address would be [pDDD.]fCCC.nBBB.zA.fidonet.net. Such unique address mapping allows one to obtain a node's IP address knowing only it's FTN address. Binkd is supporting such address mapping directly starting from version 0.9.2.

• What is the difference between fidonet.net and fidonet.org than?

  Fidonet.org domain was registered with the purpose of exchanging mail between Internet RFC822-style and Fidonet mail systems. In other words, hosts in the fidonet.org domains are Fidonet-Internet gateways that are supposed to accept mail by both SMTP and FTS-1 (or, better EMSI) protocols. There is no such restriction on hosts in fidonet.net domains (see below).

  Technology developed and tested in fidonet.net domain in the future might migrate to the fidonet.org domain subject to approval of the latter's administration.

• What do I do to get a fidonet.net hostname?
  • Your system should have binkp capability. This protocol is currently supported by binkd and Argus mailers.
  • You should contact a person who is responsible for DNS in your Fidonet network. You can use nslookup to figure out if your network already has a DNS server. If there is none, please contact Fyodor Ustinov, 2:5020/79, ufm@prospect.com.ru to arrange a DNS record for you.

• I am using Vmodem. Why should I install something else in order to be listed in fidonet.net?

  Common sense is that Fidonet systems should be able to exchange mail directly. In order to make this possible, they should support some protocol which will be the least common denominator for a given transport. FTS-1 is such a protocol for conventional dial-up transport. Vmodem-based technologies do not make a good candidate for the least common denominator protocol because

  • for many platforms these technologies are not free
  • they merely adapt dial-up technology for TCP/IP transport retaining many drawbacks of the former and without taking full advantage of the latter.

  On the contrary, binkp is

  • an open specification protocol
  • designed to operate over reliable connections with unpredictable delays (such as TCP connections)
  • has a portable implementation that is distributed in sources under terms of GNU public license.
  So, it seems to be a natural choice for the least common denominator protocol.

Credits, etc...

Fido, FidoNet and the dog-with-diskette are U.S. registered trademarks of Tom Jennings.

Dog with diskette picture that appears on the top of this page was found on Lee Kindness's WWW Fidonet Resource pages and (finally) is used with his kind permission ;).

Lothar Behet, 2:2446/301 aka 2:2/3000, has started excellent web pages dedicated to Fidonet (not only) over IP at http://home.nrh.de/fido/. Make sure to check it out!

Slava Filimonov of 2:469/33 has a Fido-viaIP resources page at http://www.slava.ml.org/fido.htm. You may check mirror of this FAQ if this site is too slow for you. binkd now! logo that appears at the top of this document was also stolen from there.

Thanks to the Department of Electronics for hosting these pages.

Many thanks to Deep Purple for inspiration.

Last : Sep 28, 1998.